According to Forbes magazine, Major League Baseball clubs have risen in value by an incredible 48 per cent over the past 12 months. The latest survey shows that the average worth of a major league ball club is now $1.2 billion each. This of course is the biggest increase since Forbes started tracking team values back in 1998. Last year there were five clubs worth at least $1 billion and this year there’s a record 15 of them with the New York Yankees leading the way at $3.2 billion.

Most sports fans in New York City are excited about the arrival of the Big Apple’s Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion team in 2015, but Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees aren’t among them. The franchise known as New York City FC (NYCFC) begins play in the 2015 season and since the club is co-owned by the Yankees and Manchester City of the English Premier League, it will be playing its 17 home games this season at the famous Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

The club sold 30,000 seats for its home debut and already seems to be quite popular among New Yorkers. However, the Yankees have to share the field with the new kids in town and have 81 home games to play this year. The ball club is a bit apprehensive about sharing their turf with the soccer team and Mark Teixeira, the Yankees’ first baseman recently told the media, “It’ll definitely cause an issue, but it’s nothing that we can control, so we can’t worry about it. It’s terrible for a field… Grass, dirt, everything gets messed up.”

Starting pitcher CC Sabathia of the New York Yankees showed up to the Major League Baseball club’s spring training facility in Tampa, Florida this year weighing 305 lbs. This comes after two consecutive years of shedding excess weight before the ball season. The odd thing about the huge weight gain is that the pitcher claimed he actually gained the extra pounds on purpose for health reasons.

Also, Sabathia said baseball scouts felt he should be heavier to be a more effective pitcher even though he was concerned about his weight because of a family member who had health problems. Sabathia was relatively slim and trim last year, at least for him, but he struggled all season long. He suffered from a degenerative knee problem and only managed to start in eight games and didn’t do very well at all.

If you’ve ever watched a Major League Baseball (MLB) game you realize it can sometimes take about five minutes for some batter’s plate appearances due to stepping in and out of the box etc. We also have pitches who take their sweet time between pitches and this can often drag games into the three-hour zone. MLB has been trying to come up with ways to speed things up and they announced some new rules on Feb. 20 in hopes of doing so.

One of the rules states that a batter must keep one of his feet in batter’s box at all times between pitches. There is an exception to this though, such as a wild pitch or foul ball, or if the umpire has granted the batter time. Another new rule states that managers who want to challenge a call via an instant-replay they have to make the challenge from the dugout. Last season, managers who challenged calls walked out onto the ball diamond. But the biggest change of all is the introduction of a timer for the half-inning breaks.